The Most African City Outside Africa

Look at the square in front of you. Colonial cobblestones, colorful facades, bars with live music. Tourists photograph it constantly. But there's something almost no one knows when they arrive here. The name of this neighborhood, Pelourinho, means exactly that: the whipping post. The pelourinho was a wooden or stone column installed in the public square. There, in full view of everyone, enslaved people were tied and flogged as punishment. This is not a metaphor. Not a symbol. It was literally that. A public torture instrument in the center of the city. Salvador was founded in 1549 by the …

Walk to this open square. It's called Terreiro de Jesus. In 1549, Brazil's first governor-general, Tomé de Sousa, gave this land to the Jesuits. Here they built a chapel, then a school, then a major college. It was the intellectual center of the colony. The Cathedral Basilica you see ahead was built between 1652 and 1672. It was Brazil's first cathedral. The Pope declared it a Minor Basilica in 1946. The interior walls are lined with 18th-century tiles and a hand-painted wooden ceiling. But notice this: the same building that was a Jesuit church became the seat of Brazil's first bishopric i…

Step into the grounds of the Igreja de São Francisco. Or at least peek inside the entrance. It's considered the most ornate baroque church in the world. The interiors are covered in carved wood and gilded with gold. Estimates suggest between 800 kilograms and one metric ton of gold on the walls. That has a story. And it's not a pretty one. The Franciscan convent was founded in 1587. The main construction was completed in the 18th century. By that time, Salvador's economy depended entirely on enslaved labor: in sugarcane mills, in the streets as porters, in houses as domestic servants. The …

This church is called Nossa Senhora do Rosário dos Pretos. Our Lady of the Rosary of the Black People. That name tells you everything. In the 17th century, enslaved people could not enter white churches. Not even after being baptized. The Catholic Church had solved the problem this way: baptize them to save their souls, but keep them out to avoid mixing them with free people. So the enslaved began building their own churches. This one started as a simple chapel. For over a hundred years, the enslaved themselves — with what little they had, with the free time stolen from their nights — buil…

You've reached Praça Municipal, the original administrative center of Salvador. This was the heart of Brazil's first colonial government. Here, decisions were made that affected the entire territory: taxes, expeditions into the interior, land distribution, port regulations. In 1549, Tomé de Sousa arrived with over a thousand men and the explicit order from King John III of Portugal to organize colonial trade. And colonial trade was primarily one thing: sugar. And to produce sugar you needed labor. And that labor was taken from Africa. By 1600, Salvador was the wealthiest city in the Souther…

Here is the Elevador Lacerda. 72 meters tall. Four elevator cars. 27 passengers each. In 2019, more than 33,000 people used it daily. It's public transport, not a tourist attraction. But its history starts much earlier. The first system was hydraulic, dating from 1873. It was built by Antônio de Lacerda, director of the Commercial Association of Bahia. In 1906 it was converted to electricity. In 1930 it was renovated with the Art Deco style you see now. The function was always the same: connect the upper city to the lower city in 30 seconds. Before the elevator existed, climbing from the p…

Down here is the Mercado Modelo. Today it's a market for handicrafts, food, caipirinha, tourist souvenirs. Before, it was something entirely different. This building was originally the Alfândega — the customs house of the colonial port. And in the basement, below where you're standing, one of Salvador's largest slave holding facilities operated. The Africans arriving by ship weren't taken directly to markets. First they were confined here, in warehouses and underground cells. They were quarantined, supposedly for health reasons. In reality it was to assess their condition, classify them, an…

We're back in the upper neighborhood. Here, in any corner of the Pelourinho, you can see capoeira circles. Capoeira has roots in engolo, the martial art of the Bantu peoples of Angola. Enslaved Africans brought it to Brazil. But in the colony, an enslaved person training in martial arts was a declared danger. So they did something brilliant: they camouflaged it as dance. The combat movements were wrapped in music, in rhythm, in the sound of the berimbau. From the outside it looked like a celebration. The enslavers tolerated it because they didn't understand it. The first documentary mentio…

Candomblé was born in Bahia. And it survived because no one fully understood what it was. The Africans brought to Brazil came from different religious traditions: Yoruba, Fon, Bantu. In the colony, practicing those religions was prohibited. The only tolerated religion was Catholicism. So they did the same thing as with capoeira: they camouflaged it. The orixás — the deities of the Yoruba pantheon — received the names of Catholic saints. Oxalá became Our Lord of Bonfim. Iemanjá became Our Lady of the Conception. Ogum became Saint George. From the outside, it looked like they were praying to…

The last stop of this tour isn't in the Pelourinho. It's about eight kilometers away, on the Itapagipe Peninsula. The Igreja do Bonfim is Salvador's most popular church. It was built in 1754 by Portuguese sailors who survived a storm and vowed to erect a temple in gratitude. But what made it famous is something else. This is where syncretism becomes most visible. The Senhor do Bonfim — Our Lord of Bonfim — is for Catholics the crucified Christ. But for candomblé practitioners, he is exactly the same as Oxalá: the most important orixá in the Yoruba pantheon, associated with creation and puri…